Childhood Can’t be too Sweet: The impact of information interventions on Sugar-Sweetened beverage consumption among children and adolescents

Rising sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption among children and adolescents precipitates a global metabolic health crisis, yet the efficacy of information interventions in emerging economies remains underexplored. Here we report results from a large-scale field experiment (N=5,427) in central China designed to test two information interventions: “short-term boosts” (video-based health literacy) and “long-term boosts” (the former plus persistent visual displays of sugar equivalents). We show that both interventions significantly reduced SSB consumption, with “long-term boosts” outperforming “short-term boosts” (−28.3 ml day⁻1 vs. –23.6 ml day⁻1), resulting in reductions in total sugar intake of 3.1 g day⁻1 and 2.2 g day⁻1, respectively, and that these effects were stronger in school than at home. Mechanism analysis reveals that these effects were driven primarily by substitution toward sugar‑free beverages. Notably, heterogeneity analysis reveals that high pocket money and baseline preference for SSBs rendered “short-term boosts” ineffective. By contrast, “long-term boosts” remained robust against these constraints and generated amplified reduction effects for overweight children and adolescents. However, dynamic analysis shows that the efficacy of both interventions waned over the week, culminating in a compensatory rebound in consumption on day 7. These findings demonstrate that while single school-based information interventions can reduce SSB consumption within a limited timeframe, their effects are not sustainable; to counteract the observed decay, effective policy must evolve from isolated school-based prompts to sustained, periodic reinforcement mechanisms that bridge the school-home divide.